I've tried to capture my question in the title but I'm confused about the methodology behind the suggestions/plan. This was the case when I used the official latest firmware and the newest beta.
I understand the prescription for a 30 minute Z1 ride. I don't see value in 3 hours at that same wattage. Garmin should be telling me to ride within my Z2 power, instead. When I switch from power to HR, it's the same Z1 but it also doesn't neatly correlate to the default LTHR zones; it tells me 112bpm this week and 137bpm next (190hrmax, 173 threshold, 48rhr). Additionally, I am unable to change the Cycling Coach plan to HR, so I delete it, and toggle between the targets on DSW settings.
I know how to roll my own plan together but I purchased the 965 to gain the guided training and allow the recovery insights to guide me. The whole concept of adaptive training isn't working correctly, I believe.
There is an interesting phenomenon occurring that may explain some of the reason why the numbers given to make don't make sense: the watch has some kind of lower FTP hidden behind the one it assigned me with auto detection.
My FTP is somewhere near 250w right now. Garmin recently calculated a 249w setting for me and I accepted it. I was prescribed recovery and base rides at 135w right before the 249w change and those rides then changed to 145w. I went into the watch's user profile and reset zones in cycling power, which also changed the FTP down to 212 (what?). Suddenly, those 145w rides went back down to 135w again, and manually inputting back to 249w didn't affect the suggestions. At least, not for this week. 145w is back on for next week.
I believe there's some kind of bug that's latent in the algorithm. I don't understand why I have a hidden FTP. I don't see it on the connect app or the web app but it does appear when I reset power zones on both the watch and connect app.
Am I not understanding something here? Z1 power should be the exception, not the default. Recovery is not just short base miles.
My fitness (vo2max, race performance) has been improving because I've gone back to following my own self-coaching by setting targets that match proper HR, watts, and RPE. Ideally, I want to be able to say that DSW/Cycling Coach works sensibly but I can't right now. Can anyone help me?
